The placing of ads alongside extremist content was a key discussion around programmatic with a number of household advertisers withdrawing their ads from automated placement. The Times investigated into the issue and found hundreds of large companies, universities and charities have been inadvertently funding sites featuring exploitive content through automated ad placement.

Aside from the controversial view of programmatic, there’s been some exciting development in supporting the digital channel. Earlier in 2017, PerformanceIN spoke to Tim Sims, VP of inventory partnerships at The Trade Desk on how audio advertising was scaling programmatic with Sims highlighting the medium becoming more “precise, relevant and easy” to scale.

Content and PR Manager Kate Rogerson at Divido criticised marketers for neglecting the design of their ads, often bringing this element too late in the decision making process. Rogerson then highlighted the importance of combining insightful data with the art of design to create tailored ads to target the right audiences effectively.

Forming parts of its audience data, content monetisation company Skimlinks expanded the availability of its data reach, revealing pre-purchase intent at a product level - allowing advertisers and agencies to target consumers by the products they’re seeking.

Kicking off the predictions for programmatic next year, Glispa Global Group’s senior director of business development, Ashwin Shekhar predicted a major shift in adoption rates by the end of 2017 - making programmatic and native ads standard practice.

MeduaSense’s Jon Bradshaw touched on the revelation of blockchain technology which provided a level of audit and transaction following research that 48% of digital media spend disappeared into supply-chain rather than actual media.

In a summer move this year, following seven years of commercial collaboration, ad tech company AppNexus and analytics tech firm Media iQ grew their programmatic advertising business over 100%, driving total revenue up to $250 million.

Programmatic has brought some benefits (data-driven targeting, low-cost inventory) and drawbacks (latency and uninspired creative) to the digital advertising space. Emir Teffaha, UK commercial director at Sublime Skinz went through some of those drivers responsible for the evolution of programmatic over the past 12 months.

In one of the most talkative points within programmatic this year in relation to advertisers and media buying agencies, many criticised agencies for not adapting enough to the channel and have called for a “radical overhaul” of the agency model itself. With research findings to back this, what could the future possible hold for buying inventory within the programmatic advertising?

The programmatic channel has come under criticism with brand safety, transparency and ROI coming out on top. However, with 2018 on the horizon, Joey Henderson from Avocet encourages advertisers to be optimistic with talent, innovation and in-housing as ideal solutions going into the channel next year.

Mustafa Mirreh

In addition to managing editorial on PerformanceIN, Mustafa reports on the latest day-to-day news updates from the world of digital marketing, while also doing social media promotion, live reporting of events, article features and interviewing key industry players and stakeholders.

Based in Bristol, Mustafa graduate with a marketing degree before delving into the world of music journalism through self-starting an online blog and collaborating with other publications. Now he has joined the PI team and has set his sights on succeeding in digital marketing.